U.S.-Pakistani Brainstorming on Border Violence

The extreme secrecy surrounding talks between the most senior American and Pakistani commanders on Tuesday underscores how gravely the two nations regard the militant threat.

ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON — The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff secretly convened a highly unusual meeting of senior American and Pakistani commanders on an aircraft carrier in the Indian Ocean on Tuesday to discuss how to combat the escalating violence along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

While officials from the two allies offered few details on Wednesday about what was decided or even discussed at the meeting — including any new strategies, tactics, weapons or troop deployments — the star-studded list of participants and the extreme secrecy surrounding the talks underscored how gravely both nations regard the growing militant threat.

The leading actors in the daylong conference were Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, chief of staff of the Pakistani Army.

Joining them aboard the carrier Abraham Lincoln were Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, who will soon become the senior officer in the Middle East; Gen. David D. McKiernan, NATO’s top officer in Afghanistan; Adm. Eric T. Olson, head of the Special Operations Command; Lt. Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, acting commander of American forces in the Middle East; and Rear Adm. Michael A. LeFever, the senior American military liaison to Pakistan. General Kayani was accompanied by ranking officers from Pakistan.

The meeting was prompted by a series of ominous developments: continuing political turmoil in Pakistan, increasingly deadly attacks against Afghan and Western targets in Afghanistan and American complaints that the Pakistani military has been ineffective in stemming the flow of militants who launch attacks in Afghanistan from Pakistani havens.

American officials pointed to two major Taliban attacks in Afghanistan last week — a coordinated assault by at least 10 suicide bombers against one of the largest American military bases and another by about 100 insurgents who ambushed and killed 10 elite French paratroopers.

“The meeting was mainly to continue to discuss ongoing operations against extremists in the border region and to work together to find better ways to solve those problems,” said one American military official who was briefed on the talks.

Admiral Mullen met with General Kayani just a month ago in Islamabad, Pakistan. It was then that this week’s meeting was scheduled, the military official said. In Islamabad, he said, Admiral Mullen had bluntly warned General Kayani that Pakistan had to do more to combat militants in the restive tribal areas.

The gathering aboard the Abraham Lincoln was less confrontational in tone, aides said. “It was one of those meetings to help clear up the situation, get an understanding of the issues, and look for a way forward,” said a senior Pakistani officer briefed on the discussions.

Military officials from both countries declined to say whether commanders had reached any new agreement to allow American Special Operations forces greater access to Pakistan’s tribal areas to conduct missions to kill or capture top leaders of Al Qaeda who have found sanctuary there.

Ted Gistaro, the American government’s senior terrorism analyst, said this month that Al Qaeda’s success in developing closer ties to Pakistani militants had given it an increasingly safe base in the mountainous tribal areas, where he said its leaders had recruited and trained “dozens” of militants capable of blending into Western society and carrying out attacks.

“They were military-to-military discussions focusing on what more the Pakistanis could do and what more we could offer to help,” the American military official said.

The official said that Tuesday’s meeting had allowed Admiral Mullen to “better understand a complex problem in a critical part of the world, and try to do that through the eyes of the leadership who live and work and fight there.”

American commanders in Pakistan and Afghanistan have sounded alarms about the growing militancy in both countries.

Maj. Gen. Jeffrey J. Schloesser, the top American commander in eastern Afghanistan, said in a telephone interview last week that American and allied forces continued to see a growing number of foreign fighters flowing into Afghanistan from Pakistan. These foreign fighters — Arabs, Uzbeks and Chechens — were carrying out ever more sophisticated strikes, he said.

General Schloesser said that recent Pakistani military operations in Bajaur and other border areas had had no impact thus far on the influx of foreign fighters. “We’ve yet to see a lessening of the movement,” he said.

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